Rithmatist PA (Q&A and Readings)

[BlairJ]

I went to the Rithmatist signing yesterday and was able to record Brandon's opening (in audio format).  I have the introduction and readings below now, and will upload the Q&A shortly. 

 

Lots of good stuff in there. Enjoy!

 

 

Early chatter and readings - https://www.dropbox.com/s/vxxh64we7ylel4d/AUD001.mp3

Q&A - https://www.dropbox.com/s/la3s47gob747hfn/AUD002_.mp3

 

 

 

 

 

*Edit 1 - MP3 format now available.

*Edit 2 - Added Q&A

Edited May 16, 2013 by BlairJ

[Yados]

Can't access that at work, anything specifically cool/new? What was the reading?

[BlairJ]

He did the same reading posted yesterday and gave some additional information.  I will post it in a better format shortly.  Maybe throw it up on Youtube.  Give me a few.

[WeiryWriter]

Wow, thanks for posting this.

 

I'm actually working on a transcription of the Q&A at the moment (I'll probably post it sometime tomorrow, I want to get it looking nicer than I have it right now).  I'll probably do the Taravangian reading as well since it goes on longer than the other one.

[PeterAhlstrom]

What was the turnout?

[BlairJ]

I think there could have been anywhere from 80-120 people there.  I was up front and it was somewhat difficult to gauge from there as many were out the door waiting in line by the time I saw them and you left out the back door....

[Yados]

I think there could have been anywhere from 80-120 people there.  I was up front and it was somewhat difficult to gauge from there as many were out the door waiting in line by the time I saw them and you left out the back door....

 

Weird, there were only 40 at the NYC signing. But then, New York is weird about fantasy books (I've always thought) and most people who don't live in one of the boroughs probably opted to drive to the PA signing rather than schlep into Manhattan. Takes about the same time. 

[Windrunner]

The fact that there has been talk of an Emperor's Soul movie makes me really excited! I think it would be difficult to do well, but I'd love to see it on the big screen.

[BlairJ]

Wow, I expected there to be a ton in NYC!  I know that because of the book (being a YA novel) I did expect to see less at each signing than usual and the fact that we were not necessarily bringing in the Dragonmount-esque peoples.  Should be a bigger turnout when we go to the Words of Radiance Signings.

[WeiryWriter]

The fact that there has been talk of an Emperor's Soul movie makes me really excited! I think it would be difficult to do well, but I'd love to see it on the big screen.

 

I actually had to re-listen to that part because I thought I had mis-heard it.  I think it would make a fantastic movie.

 

I did a transcription of the Q&A.  It's not perfect but if someone doesn't have time to listen to it or would rather read it here it is.

 

B: Mistborn video game is still in the works. We pushed it back to next gen, which meant that instead of doing it this summer, we’re looking at next summer. Still in development though so keep your fingers crossed.

Q: So Little Orbit is still going to do it?

B: Yah, Little Orbit is still doing it. Matt’s company went through some restructuring and so he may be bringing in another company to do part of it and things like that but I’m excited about it. The plan is for me to write the story and I’ve already turned in an outline for that and I’ll do all the dialogue myself which will make for a fun game.

Q: (something about voices)

B: I will not do the voices, but it is going to star a very snarky nobleman and that’s going to be fun. Snarky in games can be quite amusing (something about accepting embarrassment)

Q: (What is your writing strategy?)

B: I am usually a planner. Writers do tend to fall into two groups. A writer named George R.R. Martin likes to call them “gardeners” and “architects.” Gardeners like to just start with an interesting premise and let it grow and see where it goes. Architects like to build a structure for their story—you know a chapter by chapter—and build the book around it and I’m much more on this side. Usually. It really depends on the book though and the process. Sometimes my outline is sparse others its far more detailed. For most books I will work out my outline a lot and my setting a whole lot ‘cause I like to have cool places for my books to take place but I don’t plan out my characters as much. I let them grow and develop as the story progresses which sometimes forces me you know because the character will sometimes become somebody who wouldn’t do something the plot tells them to do and in that case I’ll err on the side of what I think the character would really do and that sometimes forces me to rebuild an entire plot after the character just decided not to do that anymore.

Q: With that in mind how did stepping into Robert Jordan’s work affect that process?

B: Good Question. Robert Jordan was a gardener he was a gardener with one archetyped attribute which means he would usually pick the ending he was writing towards for a given book or the entire series. Harriet his wife, who was also his editor, she was also, I don’t know if you’ve ever got the chance to meet her but if you ever do she was also the editor of Ender’s Game which is kind of a famous book that is getting turned into a movie. She described Robert Jordan’s process by saying “he would, like looking at a map, know he was starting in Denver and he would end up in Florida but he wouldn’t know all the points in between. He would generally write in that direction.” She would talk about the points on a map method. So when I was given all this material it was really in no particular order. He had an ending and he had a beginning and then he had a whole bunch of stuff he wanted to happen in between in no order. Some of those scenes were written because he felt like writing on that scene during the day and other scenes were a sentence and other scenes were “I don’t know what to do here yet. But this sort of thing needs to happen or maybe I’ll throw the whole thing out.” So it was really interesting it was kind of like giving me a precious Ming vase and smashed up in a sack, poured out half the pieces, thrown in some pieces of another vase just to confuse me and then handed it to me and said “we know it was going to be a vase go for it” so there was a lot of work. I spent something like six or seven months, just working on the outline before I started. It was actually nice though because I had all these scenes and I normally work from an outline. I could take these scenes and I normally work from an outline I could take these and build an outline that used them as touchstones that were his scenes all through the books that was writing that I could kind of on the path close to what he was doing. I did do a lot of revising, I did a lot of deciding “well let’s do this.” He didn’t have a lot for some characters for instance what Perrin was doing. We knew where he started at the end of Knife of Dreams and we knew what he was doing for the Last Battle and we didn’t know anything in between. Stuff like that, other than “there will probably be a confrontation with the Whitecloaks.” There was that line. (…) I just used my instincts I’d been reading the books for so long, mixed with the outline, mixed with his assistants and wife—me going to them and saying “did he say anything about this? Does this feel right? This is what I want to try. He made this comment, how do we interpret that because it contradicts this comment over here.” Where Harriet would be like “Yah he did that a lot he didn’t know what he was going to do so he’d write both down and would decide in the moment which he wanted to do” Things like that.

Q: What were you trying to write when you wrote the Rithmatist?

B: It’s a book called The Liar of Partinel and I never finished it. It was a book about the origin story of a character named Hoid who shows up in a lot of my other books and it was the wrong origin story. It was just not working and he’s a very important character in my books. So the fact that something was going wrong was really depressing and I didn’t want to continue the book with it going poorly like that. Usually I don’t recommend for people to stop writing books but I did stop writing that one.

Q: (something about waiting till he’s on his deathbed)

B: That would be awesome.

Q: One of the most unique aspects about your stories are the magic systems that are just completely new and things no one has thought of before (…) but there one of the most interesting parts of the story. I wonder how much we don’t get to know about them. Like I know on your website there were hints of more in Elantris.

B: There are a lot of things I don’t put in. Partially because the magics are all connected and I don’t went to delve into the connections for a while but also because a good rule of thumb for a writer is you need to know more than the readers know. Right? (laughter) You need to have them reading and have them think “wow this is really well thought out. He has the next seven steps” and even you don’t have the next seven steps you need to pretend that you do. On worldbuilding I like to have those steps and one of the reasons I do the magic systems like I do is— If you really get down to it creating a completely original plot is basically impossible. Right? The same stories get told. You can do something to them, a nice twist on them, your own style on them, but doing a completely new plot, anytime I’ve read someone with a completely new plot what it turns into is they don’t foreshadow anything and then its unfulfilling and so it’s really hard to be that creative with a plot. You can do some fun things with structure, but at the end of the day plot is plot. So I like to have a solid plot but where I really let myself be creative is the setting and that is where I feel the fantasy genre has not gone as far as it could go. If you look at the science fiction genre they’ve explored setting in all these interesting and cool ways and the fantasy genre kind of keeps coming back to the same things over and over. So one of the marks I wanted to make on the genre, even when I was unpublished was “Hey we can take some steps outward from what has been so familiar in the genre and I think that will improve the genre as a whole: So it’s one of the things I wanted to do as a writer, as a reader whenever I found a really cool magic I was so excited by that book. So there you are.

Q: Where did you get the idea for the Alcatraz books?

B: So the idea for the Alcatraz books came because I was sitting in a—okay don’t tell anyone this—I was sitting in a church meeting (laughter) and I like going to church but I was— but it was getting just a tad boring which never happens. I started scribbling in my notebook and I wrote one sentence which was “So there I was tied to an alter made of outdated encyclopedias about to be sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil librarians” (laughter) I just wrote that sentence. Yes, and that is chapter one sentence one and when I felt like I needed a break from the Mistborn book I took that sentence and I just started writing. The other things that made the Alcatraz books were me wanting to write a book series about people who did stupid stuff I did but they became super powers. Now I’m always late, so I wanted being late to be a super power so in the Alcatraz books there is a character who’ll arrive late to things like bullets that are shot at him so they just barely miss him and he’s always late to tax day so he doesn’t have to pay taxes. So I wanted to make super powers out of dumb stuff I do like arriving late, being really bad at dancing, or- someone’s super power is being bad at math- stuff like that. So those ideas together made the book.

Q: (…)

B: There’s not a release date but it’s coming out fairly soon. I bought the books back from the publisher because there was a disagreement on whether there should be a fifth book. They kind of ended the fourth book and put something in there that said “and now that’s the ending” and I’m like “That’s not the ending, you always knew it was going to be five books.” So I bought the books back from them and I also didn’t really like the covers. The first one I was okay with. The first one actually turned out pretty well, but after that they just didn’t feel right to me. So we parted amicably, they’re a good company, but I bought the rights back and we are going to re-release them with new covers and things like that and we’ll be doing the fifth book. So the fifth book is coming and I promise you that actually has the alter scene in it with the outdated encyclopedias that’s actually me promising not Alcatraz so you can actually trust it.

Q: So far who has been your favorite character to write in the Stormlight Archive and why?

B: I would say Dalinar. Just because Dalinar’s the character who survived from my teenage years, the person I wanted to write a book about. So he’s kind of like my favorite character even though the book isn’t as much about him as it is about Kaladin. I love Kaladin, he’s great. Kaladin was devised much later in the process than Dalinar. So that’s a little like asking someone who their favorite child is.

Q: (…)

B: Thank you. Legion. Yes, Legion I wrote as a television pitch and I pitch it and sold it to a television company. We’ll see if they actually do anything with it. Who knows, Hollywood is weird. Right? They’ll but all this stuff and who knows what they’ll actually make. I want to keep encouraging them saying “Hey, this’ll make a great television show” so I’m going to do a few more novellas like that that would be episode pitches for the show. At the end of the day if they don’t make it I’ll have about five of those and I can go to someone else and say “Here is a show with five episodes already written. Make my television show. Please!”

Q: (…)

B: Perrin came the most easily of the Wheel of Time characters. I always felt like a Perrin when I was growing up. Perrin was my favorite. When I sat down to write Perrin, it just came out easily. In fact it came out too easily sometimes. For A Memory of Light like I had just finished Towers of Midnight which is mostly Perrin. It’s a big Perrin book and so I started writing the last book and it was like the Perrin show all the time. Perrin doing everything and I sent these scenes on to Harriet and she was like “Aren’t there any other people in this series? Shouldn’t Rand be the main character in the LAST book? The main character of the series, you forgot about him?” I said “Oh yah… They’re in this book too. We actually cut about 10,000 words of Perrin doing awesome stuff because it was the Perrin show all the time. Eventually maybe I’ll be able to release some of that. Perrin went into the Ways and the Oghier and there was all sorts of coolness in the Ways. But we cut all that from the book.

Q: (How do you write all these books?)

B: I am somewhat prolific. I look a little more prolific than I am because for many years I was not as popular as I am now. Which is fine but what would happen is I would turn in a book and they would pick a release date in two years because they want plenty of time for marketing is what they said. What they really meant was everything is crowded and this is the first spot we can find for you and that was fine. So Elantris I turned in 2003, it came out 2005; Mistborn 1 I turned in 2004, and it came out 2006 and things like this. Then I started getting really popular and so I would start turning in a book and they would find a spot for it in one year instead of two years and then I would turn in a book and— like Way of Kings I turned in in May and they had it out in September and so suddenly it was like I turned in a book and books which I turned in three years ago were coming out the same years and so it seemed like everything was coming out. Then we had last year and there was nothing. There were the two novellas and that was it. That was a function of it but I do write compulsively. I really like to write and I also feel like I have to make good on this. There are so many people who want to be novelists. So many people come up to me and say “I want to be a writer” and I actually get to do it as my job. So if I sit down for the day and part of me is like “you can play Xbox” there’s another part of me that is like “there’s like 10,000 people who want to do what I’m doing right now. Just do it okay.” So I do. I write the stories. I’ve made all these promises with these books and I want to make good on them.

Q: (movies in mistborn?)

B: I am trying very hard to get many movies made. I like film and I figure it looks like half the movies made from books are good and half are terrible and I have no idea—you talk to Hollywood and they’re like “We have no idea why one ends up being good and the other terrible” but I figure I’ll sell them all and half of them will be good and half of them will stink but we’ll forget about the bad ones ‘cause the good ones are good. So I’ve actually sold the Alcatraz books, Mistborn, Steelheart—which is my older teen book coming out later this year---and Legion all have film deals going as well as The Emperor’s Soul, my novella. I just got all of these in the air. I keep in touch with the producers and I try to get them going. We were really close on Alcatraz for a while and then it kind of went “droot” and that happens. Eventually I hope we will be able to do it. I wish I could promise you yes but like Spiderman took twenty years to get made and Ender’s Game took twenty-five years to get made. If there was ever a book to make a perfect, awesome movie it was Ender’s Game. Why did it take twenty-five years? I have no idea but it just did. I can’t promise anything.

Q: (How do you sustain yourself?)

B: Financially, I got a graveyard shift at a hotel. Don’t do that if you’re twelve. Okay? (laughter) Not a good idea. But I would work over night from ten until six, actually like ten-thirty to six-thirty. I worked at a hotel that was a very quiet hotel and I would just work all night, I would write all night. When I got the job I was like “You know I’m just going to sit and write books” and they were like “Yah, you’ll be awake. The last guy we hired slept on the couch. As long as you are there to check people in and to do a walk through the hotel once an hour to make sure it’s not on fire then you can do whatever you want with your own time.” It was the perfect job for me because I was paying my way through school at the time and I wanted to be writing full time. So I would write for five or six hours a night, six days a week which isn’t quite full time but I got a lot of books written during that time.

Emotionally, was different. I wrote thirteen novels before I sold one and at some point in that I had to make the decision “I am writing for myself and I can’t depend on publication being the thing that gives me the motivation to keep going.” Either I have to give up or I have to be willing to have seventy unpublished novels in my desk when I die that my children will find and go “Wow, Dad was really weird.” I had to be willing to do that and when I made that decision everything changed, I stopped trying to chase the market, I started writing really great books. I started writing Way of Kings right after I made that decision and it was an important emotional decision for me. The process became more important than the potential publication. I still wanted to be published, I still wanted to do it as a job but I told myself I’ll keep doing this no matter what.

For new writers the big thing I would tell you is “good habits.” The best way to become a good writer is to write consistently. Just as if you were going to take piano lessons. Your piano teacher will tell you “if you want to be good at piano you’re going to have to play your piano every week, hopefully you’ll be doing it a couple days a week, if not every day.” It is the same thing for being a writer, if you will spend that time and sit down and write, that’s the only way to learn, is to practice. You will get better naturally by writing and by doing it. So I say set a goal for yourself whatever is manageable for you—so you’re writing every week or if you’re in a time and you don’t do anything else—you don’t have solitaire that you turn on, or the internet where you do check Facebook and things like that (asks whether Facebook is still “cool” or not)—if you get distracted, make yourself write longhand with pen and paper and that’ll change things. So practice.

Q: (…)

B: I have never experienced that happening; I’m with a great company with my books. Tor is very relaxed. My agent once described Tor to me, the owner, Tom Doherty, who started it is the benevolent grandfather. There are no adults around just the grandfather and the grandchildren doing whatever they want. That is you send the grandchildren off for the weekend and they all make books and that’s Tor. If’s relaxed and a little chaotic but they also do great stuff because of that and I’ve never felt- My editor and I have a really good relationship he took me out for—I was in New York yesterday—and we went to a Jewish deli, which is what we do every time I come to New York. He takes me to a new Jewish deli and I eat matzah ball soup and put cheese on my pastrami, which I’m not supposed to do (discussion on which deli he went to). I’ve never had that; I assume (…) they just want to make great books. When a Brandon Sanderson book comes in they throw a party and then all go crazy and run round trying to figure how to get it released as soon as possible.

Q: (How consciously did you try to imitate Robert Jordan’s style in writing the Wheel of Time?)

B: When I sat down to write the very first one, I tried a few things where I irritated him more. I felt that imitating him exactly would turn into parody. Like if you’ve seen people do a caricature, a caricature works because in some ways it’s too close to how you actually look and in some ways it’s just way off and that’s what would have happened. The things I could imitate him on I would but I would be so off on the other things that it would have this weird caricature sort of feel and at the end of the day I decided my focus needed to be on the characters. I want to write the characters so they are true to being themselves—the same characters that Robert Jordan wrote—but I’m not going to worry about word choice and diction as much. I did go towards more descriptive, I let myself describe more in those books but really it was “does this character sound like themselves?” even though the narrative surrounding them might be using flagstone instead of cobblestone. It might have shorter sentences compared to Robert Jordan’s beastly sentences and things like that.

 

Edit: and here is the WoR reading, it has about a paragraph more than the other one.  I also corrected the spellings as best I could.

 

Taravangian, King of Kharbranth, awoke to stiff muscles and an ache in his back. He didn't feel stupid. That was a good sign. He sat up with a groan, those aches were perpetual now, and his best healers could only shake their heads and promise him that he was fit for his age. Fit. His joints cracked like logs on the fire and he couldn't stand quickly lest he loose his balance and topple to the floor. To age was truly to suffer the ultimate treason; that of one's body against oneself. He sat up in his cot. Water lapped quietly against the hull of his cabin and the air smelled of salt. He heard voices in the near distance. The ship had docked on schedule. Excellent. As he settled himself, a servant approached from the table and another with a warm, wet cloth for wiping his hands and eyes. Behind them awaited the king's testers. How long had it been since Taravangian had been alone, truly alone? Not since long before the aches had come upon him. Mayben arrived with his morning meal. Stewed (?) and spiced grain mush was supposed to be good for his constitution. It tasted like dishwater. Bland dishwater. She stepped forward to set out the meal. The "Trall", a Thaylen man with a shaved head and eyebrows, stopped her with a hand to the arm.

"Tests first" Trall said.

Taravangian looked up, meeting the large man’s gaze. Trall could loom over a mountain and intimidate the wind itself. Everyone assumed he was Taravangian's head bodyguard. The truth was more disturbing. Trall was the one who got to decide whether Taravangian would spend the day as king, or as a prisoner.

"Surely you could let him eat first" Mayben said.

"This is an important day" Trall said, voice low. "I would know."

"But -"

"It is his right to demand this Mayben" Taravangian said. "Let us be on with it."

Trall stepped back and the testers approached; a group of three Stormwardens in purposefully esoteric robes and caps. They presented for him a series of pages covered in figures and glyphs. Mathematical problems devised by Taravangian himself during one of his “better” days. He picked up his pen with hesitant fingers. He did not feel stupid, but he rarely did. Only on the worst of days did he recognize the difference, at least immediately. Days when his mind was thick like tar and he felt like a prisoner in his own mind; aware that something was profoundly wrong. That wasn't today, fortunately. He wasn't a complete idiot. At worst he would just be very stupid. He set about his tasks, solving the mathematical problems as he could. He was not stupid fortunately, neither was he a genius. Today he was average, and that would do. He turned the problems over to the Stormwardens who consulted them softly. They turned to Trall.

"He is fit to serve" proclaimed one of the Stormwardens. "He may not change the diagram, but he may interact outside of supervision, may change policy and pass judgement."

Trall nodded, looking at Taravangian.

"Do you accept this assessment and these restrictions your Majesty?"

"I do."

Trall nodded, then stepped back, allowing the serving woman to set out Taravangian's morning meal.

The trio of Stormwardens tucked away the papers he’d filled out then retreated to their own cabins of the ship. The testing was an extravagant procedure and consumed a good hour each morning. Still it was the best way he had found to deal with his condition. Life could be tricky for a man who woke each morning with a different level of intelligence. Particularly when the entire world might depend upon his genius or might come crashing down upon his idiocy.

Edited May 18, 2013 by WeiryWriter

[Nepene]

Awesome Weiry, thank you.

[BlairJ]

Good write-up.  That saved me some time and I am surprised you got everything so well off of my recording!